"…C'mon, don't look here."
"I hear you, but the sight of you gloriously plunging your foot into the gutter is just so eye-catching."
"I-I didn't do it because I wanted to! Aaah geez, this is the worst! I have a part-time after this and no way I'm going there while stinking of the ditch… and I've got dirt splattered over my uniform and arms, too…"
"Part-time? From when?"
"…It starts at 5."
"You still have about one hour and a half there. How about heading home first?"
"Huh? It takes me an hour to get home by train each way, alright? I'm not gonna make it!"
"I see, that's certainly unreasonable. Let's see… wanna come to my place? It's the apartment right over there. I can lend you a shower, at least."
"Eh…?"
"What do you say?"
"…I'll borrow your shower. Thanks."
This was the first time Fujiwara Sandai had ever exchanged words with Yuizaki Shino.
On his way home from school just after the start of the second semester in early September, he happened to see Shino missing her footing and plunging into a ditch filled with dirty sewage water.
At the high school Sandai was attending, there was a gyaru considered to be an extraordinary beauty—and it was Yuizaki Shino, the one he'd just spoken to.
Shino was seated right behind Sandai, and the physical distance between them was very close. However, throughout their school life, Sandai had never had a single conversation with Shino.
From the point of view of Sandai who was someone ordinary with many otaku-like hobbies and a loner at the bottom most end of the class caste, Shino was pretty much an extraterrestrial existence to him; even when passing print-outs from the front to the back, never had he talked to her because he didn't know what she was even thinking.
This wasn't the outcome of a conscious decision, rather an unconscious segregation of 'because the worlds they were living in were different.'
However, it was for this reason that Sandai had got surprised at himself suddenly getting talked to; nor could he believe that Shino had readily accepted his proposal.
However, there is a word called 'coincidence' in this world. That was why Sandai thought, That must be what is happening now.